


ruined for all others

by Prevalent_Masters



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Acting Like a Married Couple, M/M, Miscommunication, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Loves Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Pre-Canon, growing relationship, light angst but more just like sappy declarations of love as a response to light angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:41:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29092215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prevalent_Masters/pseuds/Prevalent_Masters
Summary: There in the trees as Nicolò turns back towards camp, he has a terrible thought—has Nicolò changed his mind about him? Is he no longer interested in Yusuf? They have known and loved each other for as long as most mortals have on this earth, and many mortals grow tired of their lovers and spouses long before they die. Perhaps it was too much to think that Nicolò would love him forever. Just because Yusuf fell into Nicolò as one falls off a cliff, fast and final, doesn’t mean Nicolò feels the same about him.Or: When Yusuf and Nicolò finally join up with the women from their dreams, something changes, something that has felt steady for years, and Yusuf feels unmoored.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 28
Kudos: 324
Collections: All and More (18+) Kaysanova Gift Bag 2020





	ruined for all others

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NamelesslyNightlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NamelesslyNightlock/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [NamelesslyNightlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NamelesslyNightlock/pseuds/NamelesslyNightlock) in the [All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> **1) Discord—** quietlyapocalyptic
> 
>  **3) Long prompts—**  
>  —It's been just the two of them for so long, that when Andy and Quynh join them it's difficult to adjust.  
>    
> Went with the prompt about their relationship after they find Quynh and Andy! Always thought it must have changed things for them, at least for a bit, so this was fun to explore!

The women find them in Cairo. They've been there nearly ten years and will have to move on again soon, their unblemished skin and lack of grey hairs starting to draw joking comments from friends and neighbors. Settling anywhere at all is a risk, they both know, but sometimes the constant movement is too much. Sometimes they just want a home.

They’re returning to the small apartment they’ve been renting one evening, as the shadows stretch long. It’s midsummer, cruelly hot, and Yusuf is looking forward to taking off most of his clothes and sprawling out on the bed with Nicolò, enjoying the tangerines they bought at the market earlier. Beside him, Nicolò yawns and scrubs a dirty hand across his face. He’s found work unloading merchant ships on the river docks, and is covered in sweat and dust.

“You need a bath,” Yusuf murmurs. Nicolò smirks.

“Will you wash me?”

“Whatever you desire, ya amar.”

Nicolò leans close and whispers, “Will you lick me clean?”

He flushes and knows Nicolò hears his quiet gasp. This side of Nicolò—teasing, flirty, so sexy, and open about all of it, took years to reveal itself. It still brings Yusuf to his metaphorical knees. Or his actual ones, depending on the situation. 

“After you wash,” he manages, nudging Nicolò away slightly. “When you no longer smell of sweat I will lick every inch of your body.” 

“I thought you liked my sweat,” Nicolò says, and licks his lips very deliberately.

Good thing they’re close to home. Yusuf won’t be able to resist pressing him against the wall and kissing him until he’s gasping, even before he washes. Yusuf can never resist Nicolò.

They round the corner and Yusuf reaches for their door. It swings wide at a touch and they both freeze, suddenly alert. Yusuf locked the door that morning when he left. They always lock it, because they have accumulated a few things of decent value, because they want to keep their space to themselves. 

“We should go,” Nicolò whispers. “Back to the docks, find a boat. If we are discovered—”

“We cannot leave everything behind,” Yusuf says, thinking of their books, his pens and inks, Nicolò’s sword and his scimitar, the small pile of coins they’ve saved. 

“Yusuf, we cannot be caught—” he cuts off with a small gasp and Yusuf turns in time to see a blade at his throat, an arm around his waist. His hand goes to his own knife, but the knife at Nicolò’s neck digs deeper at his movement and he draws back, showing his palms.

“Please,” he says, desperate. Of course, a cut throat will not long be an obstacle for either of them, but they would have to kill anyone who saw their resurrection, and he hates to do that. “You can take anything you want, just—don’t hurt him.”

“Oh,” says the hooded figure holding Nicolò tight, sounding amused. “I don’t think this will hurt him, though, will it?” And the knife digs in.

Yusuf lunges forward, but it’s too late—Nicolò gurgles once and dies quickly, blood soaking the front of his tunic and spilling from his lips. Their assailant lowers his body carefully and stands to face Yusuf, who’s pulled his knife out. Nicolò’s death erases any qualms he had about killing.

The hooded figure blocks his first swipe easily with a forearm. Blood swells, drips—and stops.

Yusuf freezes. The assailant pulls back their hood. Nicolò gasps to life on the ground.

“You,” Yusuf gasps, and the green-eyed woman from his dreams smiles. “Me.”

“What—why—?”

“I wouldn't want to be mistaken,” the woman says casually, as though she hasn’t just slit Nicolò’s throat. 

“You could have just injured him. Or better, me!”

She shrugs. “It’s not lasting, is it? Come.” She opens the door to their own quarters and beckons them inside. Yusuf helps Nicolò to his feet and enters, despite his misgivings.

The other woman sits at their small wooden table with flatbread, cheese, and figs spread in front of her, cleaning a dagger. She smiles when they enter. “Hello.”

Behind him, Nicolò is shaking. Yusuf knows him well enough to read it as rage rather than fear. He sets a gentle hand on Nicolò’s arm, but Nicolò jerks away.

“Sit,” says the woman who killed him. “Let us become acquainted with one another.”

* * *

After dinner, the two women retreat to their own rented room and Nicolò and Yusuf curl on their bedroll and debate what to do.

They could leave. They’ve met the women, and they say the dreams will stop now. They could slip away and leave them with no way to follow. Yusuf is in favor of this course of action—no matter the women’s friendliness and seemingly genuine delight at finding them, Andromache did kill Nicolò, which is not a promising start to friendship. And their presence was unsettling, after so long of just the two of them.

But Nicolò, despite his misgivings, says they can’t. “We’ve dreamed of them for so long, Yusuf,” he says. “It must mean something. I think we’re meant to be with them, to travel with them. After all, they’re like us. And it’s getting lonely, no? Just the two of us? Even here. We’ve been happy, but we’ll have to leave soon because no one will understand us. We can’t really be true with anyone we met, except for them. We should stay.”

Yusuf can admit he’s right on most of those counts. Their existence is strange, lonely, isolating. It would be nice to have companions.

“Fine,” he allows. “We will stay. That doesn’t mean I like them, though.”

* * *

They leave Cairo soon after. The women spend much of their time lending their services as mercenaries or guards, dressed and acting as men. It’s similar to the work they found in their first years together, protecting caravans, guarding merchant storehouses, and lending helping hands to those in need. As the time passes, Yusuf is glad they didn’t leave the women—he grows to like them, to trust them. It seems Nicolò does, too.

But still, something lingers. Something lost. They had grown so used to being together, to sleeping curled together, to being open with each other in their own space. Now, they are almost never alone, and Nicolò seems uncomfortable in a way he never did before. They still sleep together, but the touches and kisses and lovemaking are rare, only something they do when they are truly alone. Yusuf confronts him about it once, says the women are more than aware of what they are to each other if they saw anything resembling what Yusuf and Nicolò saw them doing in their dreams. They certainly have no trouble laying together on the other side of a fire or a rented room. Sometimes Yusuf lies awake blushing at the absolutely debauched sounds that come from their bedroll.

Nicolò looks somewhere between embarrassed and angry when he brings it up. “I don’t want to do it when we’re not alone, Yusuf,” he murmurs. 

Yusuf draws him close, dipping to kiss his neck, his collarbone. They are alone for a moment amongst the trees, heading back to their campsite with freshly filled waterskins. “We can ignore them, pretend they aren’t there. They wouldn’t mind; they certainly don’t extend us the same courtesy.”

“I don’t want to,” Nicolò says, extracting himself from Yusuf’s mouth and pressing a gentle, chaste kiss against his lips. “It’s too much, it’s not the way it was. Perhaps in the next town we can get two separate rooms?”

“Please,” Yusuf says. His balls might just explode if they don’t. But there in the trees as Nicolò turns back towards camp, he has a terrible thought—has Nicolò changed his mind about him? Is he no longer interested in Yusuf? They have known and loved each other for as long as most mortals have on this earth, and many mortals grow tired of their lovers and spouses long before they die. Perhaps it was too much to think that Nicolò would love him forever. Just because Yusuf fell into Nicolò as one falls off a cliff, fast and final, doesn’t mean Nicolò feels the same about him. 

Perhaps this strange new dynamic with the women is only an easy excuse for Nicolò to draw away from him, to set their relationship to fresh boundaries, to let him down lightly.

* * *

Yusuf writes letters because he cannot find the right words to say out loud. He writes them in Arabic, which Nicolò still struggles to read, and keeps them in his pockets, too frightened to give them to Nicolò because of what he might say in response.

_Ya amar, I love you as I have never loved another. I could not have conceived of this love before meeting you. I will live and die carrying you in my heart._

_Ya amar, I look at you across the fire with the light playing off your face and the sight almost makes me weep._

_Ya amar, I love you beyond measure and reason. You turned this curse into a blessing, because I am able to spend all these days and lifetimes with you._

_Ya amar, I fell in love with you before I understood what was happening. I watched your every move, watched you cook our meals and fight off our enemies and curl into yourself at night, and I loved you though I didn’t realize it. I watched you help strangers and run your fingers over cloth and paper at the markets and sing to yourself in a language I didn’t understand when you thought I couldn’t hear you, and I realized I cared for you more than I could conceive. I watched you wash bloodstains out of your clothes and blush when I complimented you and kill a man who stabbed me in the back and search out overpriced dates in the market because you knew I liked them, and I realized I loved you. I watched you grip the sheets and crane your neck and flush so beautifully and I watched your eyelashes flutter as you cried out and I watched your body move around mine and I realized I could never have another in the way I have you. You have ruined me forever, for all others, my Nicolò. It is you alone, you are all and more._

_Ya amar, I did not understand the poets until I loved you._

_Ya amar, what has changed?_

* * *

They are far from the Mediterranean now, the region they never left because it spelled home for both of them. The women are both from far to the east, and they range that way, moving across vast plains and past towering mountains, higher than Yusuf has ever seen. It’s springtime, and they’re passing through vast forests of blooming wild apples, the air heavy with their sweet scent and alive with the bees buzzing amongst blossoms. On a bright morning, Andromache and Quỳnh leave to go hunting and Nicolò approaches him, tattered papers clutched in his hands.

Yusuf’s stomach sinks. Nicolò did their laundry a few days ago, when they camped near a rushing stream, and Yusuf handed him his tunic with the inner pockets where his notes were tucked away without a second thought. 

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says softly. “What are these?”

“I…” he trails off, praying that Nicolò did not understand the letters. “I just...notes to myself.”

“No,” Nicolò says. “My Arabic is not that terrible. Yusuf, why would you think these things? Why would you not tell me?”

He sighs and covers his face with his hands. “How could I not at least wonder? Nico, these past months since we met Andromache and Quỳnh you’ve barely touched me. You brush me away when I touch you. And you must know, if...if you do not feel the same way as you once did, I will accept it, I will let you be. It will be my great privilege to walk by your side as a friend through this life.” Tears prick at his eyes as he speaks, the thought of it too painful to bear. “But please, if that is true, tell me why?” He slides his hands down and looks at Nicolò, his wonderful, beautiful Nicolò. “What happened?”

Nicolò looks broken open, face raw and painful. “How could you think this? I cannot—Yusuf, I cannot even begin to apologize, for making you feel this way. Of course I don’t—I could not—I feel the same for you as I ever have.”

“You...you do? Then why…”

Nicolò throws up his hands in exasperation. “I do not know how to act now, with Andromache and Quỳnh! I was so used to you, so comfortable with you. I felt like I could be everything I am, hiding nothing, because I know you so well. I'd never felt that way with anyone, before you. But...with them, I still don’t know them, not really. I am getting there, but it—it’s not the same. I miss you, miss being together with you. I miss us.”

“Oh, Nicolò,” he whispers, and the tears fall. “I miss us, too.”

Nicolò crosses the yawning distance between them and gathers Yusuf in his arms—strong and warm as ever, and oh, how he missed this. Nicolò tucks his chin up over the top of Yusuf’s bowed head and grips the back of his neck and he melts into him. 

“I need to be better,” Nicolò says quietly. “I should not have let it come to this. For you to think...to believe I do not love you anymore! I have failed you. I am so sorry.”

“You could never fail me. I should have said something sooner. And I think I knew...I was just scared. I want to go back to Cairo, back to that life we had. I always knew it would be a brief respite, but I wish it could have been longer.”

“As do I. What is it you said in the note? I love you beyond all things, beyond understanding. It was destiny we found each other, and I will love you until the day we leave this earth together. We were bound together in death, we will be bound together throughout this long life, and I thank God for that every day.”

“Beyond measure and reason,” Yusuf murmurs into his shoulder, and smiles.

Nicolò pulls away slightly to look him in the eyes. “May I show you how much I love you, Yusuf?”

Yusuf closes his eyes and leans their foreheads together. “Yes,” he says. “Always.”

* * *

Under the blossoming apples, Nicolò shows him. He lays him out and undresses him slowly, excruciatingly so, kissing every bit of exposed skin until Yusuf is gasping and writhing beneath him. Then he spends an age kissing and pinching at his nipples, whispering in his ear how much he loves watching Yusuf twitch and gasp, how beautiful he is, how he dreamt of him nearly every night these last months, dreamt of the way he looks when they do this. When he finally gets his mouth on him Yusuf is already close, cock stiff and weeping. He spills almost immediately into the warmth of Nico's mouth. He would be embarrassed, only it’s been months, and Nicolò isn’t daunted. In fact, he looks pleased, pulling off Yusuf and licking his lips so deliberately Yusuf’s cock twitches again with interest. 

“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs in Yusuf’s ear as his fingers creep down towards his hole and circle it teasingly, making Yusuf shiver. “You’re extraordinary. How could I ever be anything but spellbound by you?”

When he slips the first finger in, he says “I love you as I have never loved another, and never will,” and Yusuf groans.

When he slips in a second, he says “I still do not understand the poets, unless you are reading your own poetry to me, and then I think I do,” and Yusuf cries out, gasping.

When he slips in a third, he says, “You have ruined me for all others, forever,” and Yusuf says, “Please, Nico, please, I’m ready,” and Nicolò slides into him and they are joined, as they are meant to be, pressed close and gasping into each others’ mouths, foreheads knocking together.

“I love you,” Yusuf manages, voice cracking and wrecked.

“And I you,” Nicolò says. “It will always be so.”

Yusuf believes him.

* * *

When Quỳnh and Andromache return from hunting, they’re fully dressed and hard at work cleaning weapons. Still, something in the air must have changed because the women exchange a glance and grin.

“So,” Quỳnh says. “You two finally figured it out.”

“Fucked it out, more like,” Andromache says, and Quỳnh nudges her and snickers.

“What in the world do you mean?” Nicolò says, with impressive dignity.

Andromache rolls her eyes. “You two have been circling each other like dogs in heat and not doing anything about it for months. Really, we appreciate your consideration, but what did you think you were hiding from us?”

“I—we weren’t hiding anything!” Nicolò is blushing now, and Yusuf drinks it in. He loves Nico flustered, just as he loves him every other way.

“Right,” Quỳnh says. “Seems like you were trying to be polite in mixed company, which honestly is silly—do you think we didn’t know?”

“I assumed you knew, I just—”

“It’s different,” Yusuf interrupts, saving him from stumbling all over his words. “We were used to being alone together, and it is different with four instead of two. But we’ve...talked it through.”

“ _Talked_ ,” Andromache says, with great amusement.

“We did see everything, in the dreams.” Quỳnh says conversationally. “And I mean _everything_. Honestly, if you’d like, we have a few tips you might be interested in to mix things up—”

“We’re quite alright,” Nicolò says loudly, beet-red now, and Quỳnh laughs and ruffles his hair before taking a dagger from him and settling down to sharpen it. Andromache picks up a freshly sharpened knife and starts skinning the rabbits they caught for dinner, continuing her gentle teasing as she does so. And Yusuf can’t help but laugh, because it seems coalesced, now, all them together. His family, grown by two; and still Nicolò by his side, steady and true, as he always will be.

Until the end.

**Author's Note:**

> This was such a fun challenge to participate in! Really got me out of a writing slump, so thanks to everyone who participated and to the All and More server in general! 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr!](https://prevalent-masters.tumblr.com)


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